A skeleton in the Hlint crypts beat me up just a little while ago, and I went into negative hitpoints but immediately stabilized and started healing back up - literally less than a second after I fell. I proceeded to lay down the Kung ElFu on the skeleton and dragged my wounded elven butt out of the crypt, but then realized my character portrait had stayed as the "flashing death skull", and not reverted to my original one (f_shielle). It appears to be saved to my character, as logging out and back in didn't fix it.